Hong Kong Tourism Board has released provision numbers for tourist arrivals in the month of September, showing marginal rise from all markets, with mainland China still holding a lion’s share of total visitor numbers.

About 66,000 visitors arrived in Hong Kong in the month of September according to provisional figures released by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), reflecting a minor growth of 11 pc from August when 59,600 visitors had arrived in the autonomous region of China.

With this, the total number of visitors in the year 2022, from January to September has risen to just under 250,000. An overwhelming number of arrivals in September and throughout the year have been from mainland China, largely because the territory has remained closed to foreign visitors all through the year 2022 as part of the zero Covid-19 policy that China follows.

Mainland Chinese visiting Hong Kong in September numbered about 51,000 or 77 pc of the total number of visitors. In the year, too, the mainland Chinese visitors have overwhelmingly dominated the total arrivals. Of the 250,000 visitors, the mainlanders account for about 202,000 or 81 pc of the total number of visitors.

HKTB says that the visitors came to Hong Kong mainly for overnight stopover, family visits, business trips or other essential travel needs. However, despite the marginal growth, Hong Kong remains far behind the tourism scenario before the Covid-19 pandemic shut the industry down. The total tourist arrivals in 2022 are less than 1 pc of the pre-pandemic figures.

However, life for the tourism industry in the territory should start looking up in October as from October 1, the local government has removed mandatory hotel quarantine for foreign visitors paving the way for some meaningful growth in numbers in the last quarter of the year.